Business leaders attending Friday’s Lawrence Chamber of Commerce annual meeting agree the city needs to work on becoming more business-friendly.

About 500 people attended the event at the Lawrence Holidome, 200 McDonald Drive. Many came to see and hear a keynote speech by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the social hour before Myers spoke, chamber members reflected on the climate in Lawrence for business.

“I think the perception of Lawrence is anti-growth,” said Dwayne Peaslee, a retired union leader and chamber board member.

Squabbles over land use and issues such as the proposed workplace smoking ban lead some to believe that new businesses don’t want to bother with Lawrence.

Peaslee said discussion about economic development in Lawrence needed to shift to the industrial sector. Unemployment rates will decline, he said, if Lawrence can draw more jobs that require unskilled labor. And if Lawrence can draw more jobs in the industrial sector, people will be more willing to spend money on retail goods, he said.

“We haven’t generated the jobs we need,” he said.

Lawrence will have to project a more positive image to lure any new businesses, said Linda Robinson, a school board member who attended the event.

Meredithe McCormick, left, a Lawrence Chamber of Commerce membership sales executive, chats with Ruby and Dwayne Peaslee. They attended the chamber's annual meeting Friday night at the Lawrence Holidome, 200 McDonald Drive. About 500 people attended the event.

“Because of the hoops that they have to go through, there’s a concern that there’s this perception that we’re not a business-friendly community,” she said.

The recent business-related squabbles emanating out of City Hall — including land-use allocation for Wal-Mart and the proposed smoking ban controversy — are a product of Lawrence’s diversity, said Hank Booth, executive director of the Kansas Wildscape Foundation and a former owner of KLWN and KLZR radio.

If someone made a joke that tomorrow the sun will rise in the west and set in the east, Booth said, Lawrence residents would become uneasy.

“There would be a committee formed immediately to study the issue, and somebody would probably call me an extremist,” he said. “And that’s Lawrence. That’s what makes it beautiful.”